Activating Old Computers

Recently, I had to activate my daughter's notebook, a Compaq C700, so that my relative may be able to use them. I do not need them but they are still useful for simple tasks such as writing reports.

Its hard disk was only about 120Gb. I had already transfered its hard disk to an external hard disk case to be used as a backup device for my Macbook Air.

I installed a Scorpio black because it was the fastest hard disk for notebooks. At RM290 it was almost he same price as a 120Gb SSD but I decided that 1Tb is more useful especially when the Scorpio black is a 7200 rpm drive. Its performance was reasonable but the C700 can only be upgraded to 3Gb of RAM. Its screen is also damaged although still useable. The C700 can have its processer upgraded and the price of the processor is low. The advantage of the C700 was that it is able to run 64 bit windows.

I ordered a Lenovo/IBM T60 as a hobby and backup notebook for myself. I like to test if its keyboard is really useful as promoted by a lot of youtube posters. I hope that I can keep this notebook for many more years because it is a business class notebooks that should last a long time.

I had managed to install Windows 10 to the IBM T60. I installed Windows 7 first and use the Media Creation Tool to download an ISO image of the Windows 10 which turned out to be the latest, version 1709, which is later than all my Windows 10 devices. Although I had created a bootable USB using  for the ISO, it was not allowed to upgrade from it. You need to run the setup program while running your existing Windows. The same method is used to upgrade your Windows 10 devices. I had done it once in order to upgrade to Windows 1703 but had waited for the autoupdate to do its work first.

I deliberate chose a T60 with a graphic processor, the ATI X1300. Normal T60 does not have it. In fact, it was not advertised as having one in eBay but I saw the ATI sticker on the palm rest of the notebook. I installed Windows 7 and 10 without having graphic drives for the ATI X1300 until I got the learned about the location of the old ATI catalyst v 10.2 driver. I tried to install it automatically but it Windows 7 and 10 failed to detect the graphic chip but managed to extract the driver files. By installing and choosing the driver manually, I was able to install the driver.

The driver files are in C:\ATI.......\drivers.

The menu for the maual selection of driver files are:
...Diplay adapter properties\adapter\properties\Driver\Update driver\browse for drivers...\Let me pick from a list of available drivers .....\....

This manual selection is useful for some devices that were only supplied with drivers for old equipment. It does not work for all devices though.